Alynna Williams has Jefferson University back in NCAA Tournament in a flash | Mike Jensen

They used to call her “Flash,” back when Alynna Williams was a running back for the Conshohocken Bears, playing a couple of years of flag football and a couple of years of tackle. Her father used to tell her to calm down, that she didn’t have to be so aggressive.

“No one knew I was a girl until I took my helmet off,’’ Williams said. “It was always a bad scene.”

She meant the reaction from the other teams, and their parents. Her teammates knew what this 55-pound grade-schooler was all about.

“My dad made me give it up,’’ Williams said. “Boys were starting to get bigger. I didn’t want to stop.”

Her fearlessness kept up. Jefferson University wouldn’t be in this week’s NCAA Division II hoops tournament without this 5-foot-2 senior point guard who kind of willed her team into the postseason. Last Saturday’s CACC title game was up for grabs, Jefferson and Holy Family fighting for a bid, when Williams hit a three-pointer for a one-point lead with a little less than two minutes left.

Next possession, Jefferson still clinging to that lead, Williams drove, got her shot blocked, but went and retrieved the ball, took it outside, with barely any time left on the shot clock, just more than a minute left in the game.

She nailed another three.

“She got it blocked and got it back from two people,’’ said Jefferson coach Tom Shirley, who now has 797 career victories. “She had the presence of mind to take a shot, rather than eat the ball or pass it and lose the possession. In this case, it went in. Her making that shot does not surprise me. But her uncanniness in understanding she had to take the shot was even bigger.”

Jefferson was celebrating a minute later, a young team, four starters gone, that looked out of its depths in December, now riding a 12-game winning streak into Friday’s game at Adelphi (N.Y.) ... assuming the game comes off (since nothing is assured these days).

Herb Magee’s Jefferson men’s team already had locked up an NCAA at-large spot and will play a first-round game against Stonehill (Mass.) on Saturday in Bridgeport, Conn. Jefferson goes down as the only Philly-area school to send men’s and women’s hoops teams to the NCAAs, any division.

“This was so far-fetched,’’ Shirley said right after the game of his team’s winning the CACC for a second straight year, going back to when his team was 8-11, not even treading water. “I didn’t even request any [expenses] for NCAAs. We’ve got to get a bus.”

As things got rocky, Shirley said, he told his younger players that they couldn’t just play guitar and the drums, that they needed some lead singers.

He knew he had one in Williams.

“She’s just one of those kids — she could be 1-of-7, I wouldn’t think of taking her out,’’ Shirley said. “I’ll mention she stinks at that moment, but I won’t take her out.”

This one can take it and dish it out.

“It started out we’re both Colonials,’’ Shirley said of recruiting Williams out of his alma mater, Plymouth Whitemarsh. “You always go to the local schools just to see what they’ve got. Really it comes down to the kid can play, or the kid can’t play. ‘A’ could play. She’s like 2-foot-6, but she could play. For me, it’s little stuff, too. You make a phone call; they call back. She was like that. She got it.”

There was talk this season about needing to get extra film work in, extra shooting — “being in the gym at times you really didn’t want to,’’ Williams said, acknowledging she wasn’t afraid of speaking up to her teammates about what had to be done.

“Probably a little too much,’’ Williams said, who now has 1,795 career points, sixth all-time at Jefferson, of how much she talked to teammates. “I have the experience. I’d rather talk too much than not enough, if you know what I mean.”

An assistant coach, Matt Bamford, brought in a book, The WE Gear: How Good Teammates Shift from Me to We. There was a survey in the book. Williams took it, and passed it on. Never easy for people to hear things they had to get better at, but this group got better at them.

“I’m still processing it,’’ Williams said of going back to the NCAAs. “It’s so overwhelming, but we can continue this. We’re more than hot. Me and Coach have talked about this. We can keep going. This isn’t a fluke.”

Those two three-pointers weren’t her only ones of the day. Williams had five, and that day broke her school’s career record for threes, with 243. And also now has a conference tournament MVP trophy, after scoring 23 points in the final. Jefferson had upset Sciences in the semifinals. Sciences also moves on to the NCAAs.

If it all seemed to come out of nowhere, maybe it did, unless you were one of those Conshohocken Bears from way back when. They probably all still remember how this fearless girl could make things happen in a flash.